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03 Jun 2011 14:32

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Culture: Book excerpt: Psychopaths are more normal than you think

  • After they arrested me, I sat in my cell and I thought, ‘I’m looking at five to seven years.’ So I asked the other prisoners what to do. They said, ‘Easy! Tell them you’re mad! They’ll put you in a county hospital. You’ll have Sky TV and a PlayStation. Nurses will bring you pizzas.’
  • A diagnosed psychopath named Tony •  Describing how he got put into the Broadmoor mental hospital in England. He pretended to be insane to get out of a jail sentence, after other prisoners told him to. He copied books and movies he’d seen and read, and was sent to the mental asylum. However, when it came time for him to get out – he couldn’t. He actually was a psychopath, according to a number of tests that had been done on him. This excerpt from author Jon Ronson’s “The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry” is a fascinating piece on a subject few know about — how psychopaths are diagnosed and treated.  source
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03 Jun 2011 13:43

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U.S.: Sky Express bus crash: Driver charged with manslaughter

  • crash Early Tuesday morning, a major bus crash killed four people in Virginia, and many others on the 58-passenger bus had to go to the hospital after the bus they were on flipped over.
  • company The government shut down the bus company that owned the vehicle, Sky Express, after the crash; it had garnered many federal safety violations in the past, including driver fatigue.
  • chargesToday, officials charged the driver behind the wheel during the crash, Kin Yiu Cheung, with involuntary manslaughter for the passenger deaths. Fatigue played a role in the crash. source
Posted by Justin Jones • 0 Comments • Permalink

02 Jun 2011 14:59

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U.S.: FBI investigating China for hacking job

  • cause Hackers went after Gmail, but didn’t compromise many accounts. However, some of the hacked accounts belong to some pretty high-ranking officials here in the U.S. Google claims that the hack originated in China, and the accounts have since been secured.
  • effect The FBI is investigating the hacking, which the Chinese government is saying that they had nothing to do with. However, Google believes the attack originated from the same city as one that targeted U.S. companies last year, including Google. source
Posted by Justin Jones • 0 Comments • Permalink

02 Jun 2011 14:25

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U.S.: Romney announces candidacy, promises healthcare repeal

  • Mitt Romney officially announced his candidacy for 2012 today, shooting for his second run at the White House. He promised to repeal “Obamacare” (which he fathered, right?) and to make more jobs for Americans. His focus is to take power from the federal level and give it to the states, like a true Republican, and he talked extensively about his political credentials. But the important question is, does he really stand a chance against T-Paw and those ads? (photo via Gage Skidmore) source
Posted by Justin Jones • 0 Comments • Permalink

02 Jun 2011 14:18

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Tech: Tennessee lawmakers pass stupid anti-password-sharing law

  • Share your password on Netflix? If you live in Tennessee, you should stop. They just passed a law that makes it illegal to share your password to sites like Netflix and Rhapsody — even with permission. They’re the first state to do this. While you don’t have to worry about sharing within the same house, you might have to worry if you have a son or daughter in college, because they just might be sharing your password with everyone on their floor in their dorm. This is because the language of the law is super-vague and punishes mostly innocuous uses of password-sharing. And the punishments are steep too — up to a year in jail and a $2,500 fine for $500 or less of “theft,” which the law treats as a misdemeanor. The recording industry, as you might guess, is behind this stupid law — and they hope other states will follow suit after this. source
Posted by Justin Jones • 0 Comments • Permalink

02 Jun 2011 13:57

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Tech: Meme theft drama: The Oatmeal takes on FunnyJunk

  • In one of the great battles of Memedom, this one might be remembered as the “War of Attribution.” What happens when a guy who draws a ton of memeworthy comics goes up against a site that aggregates comics just like his without any attribution whatsoever? Drama. That’s what happened when the guy behind The Oatmeal merely asked for a little credit for his work from the site FunnyJunk — after they stole all his content.
  • Many lulz, no attribution Matthew Inman, the creator of the famous webcomic The Oatmeal has a huge issue with FunnyJunk.com. Users of that site have been taking his comics, removing all forms of attribution, and posting them on the ad-laden site. He’s tried unsuccessfully to get them removed, but they keep showing up. “I realize that trying to police copyright infringement on the internet is like strolling into the Vietnamese jungle circa 1964 and politely asking everyone to use squirt guns,” Inman wrote, but he feels he needs to protect his rights.
  • Reasonable vs. immature All sorts of problems arose came from Inman just asking for FJ to link to his site — not exactly a huge thing — and the whole mess turned into a giant dramabomb that spread beyond The Oatmeal and FunnyJunk and hit Reddit and Facebook. It’s an interesting copyright battle that takes on some of the touches of YouTube vs. Viacom, except with more uses of anti-gay slurs and meme-talk. Honestly … we’re with Inman. And the guy who runs FunnyJunk is kind of an immature baby who tried to turn his entire userbase on Inman. source
Posted by Justin Jones • 0 Comments • Permalink

01 Jun 2011 15:04

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Tech: Google still revolutionizing internet search — +1 at a time.

  • It’s the new “like.” Google is expanding its rollout of a way to make searching more effective — the +1 button. Basically, it allows you to recommend search results to your friends and complete strangers in the event they search for the same thing you do. Google seems to think that they can even make searching for things on the web social. Realistically, it should help you sift through the thousands of search results to quickly find the one that’ll help the most. Keep an eye out for it, because a bunch of big sites are going to start using it. source
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01 Jun 2011 14:50

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Music: Lady Gaga gets assist from Amazon in million-selling week

  • 1,108,000 number of copies of Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” sold in its first week, the tenth-largest week of sales in SoundScan history
  • 1,140,000 number of copies 50 Cent’s “The Massacre” sold in its first week back in 2005; Gaga’s album is the largest sales week since then source
  • » Lady Gaga’s album set a record for digital sales, but Lady Gaga can’t get all the credit. Amazon was selling the album for 99 cents on its first day (even though it kind of backfired), contributing about 440,000 copies in the first week. Not surprisingly, Amazon’s deal upset some retail outlets, namely music stores who lost sales because of the insanely low price Amazon sold the album for. (Best Buy also had a similar deal, where they gave an album away with a cell phone. And it also sold at some kinda weird outlets, like CVS and Whole Foods.)
Posted by Justin Jones • 0 Comments • Permalink

01 Jun 2011 13:34

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Biz: Protip: Sports drinks great for exercise, not for kids

  • Sports drinks probably aren’t the best choice for kids, because they could lead to obesity, according to a new study. Researchers suggest that children drink water for hydration instead, because there aren’t the extra calories you might find in sports drinks like Gatorade or Powerade. The study also looked at kids that were drinking energy drinks after exercise, coming to the somewhat obvious finding that they’re bad for kids because of the extra stimulants in them — including caffeine. A spokesperson for the American Beverage Association, an industry group, notes that the drinks “are not intended for young consumers.” source
Posted by Justin Jones • 0 Comments • Permalink

31 May 2011 15:46

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Tech: Slimdown: Intel puts laptops on diets to compete with Apple

  • Intel has plans to release a computer to compete with the Macbook Air and the iPad. The new computer — called an Ultrabook — would be extremely thin and have tablet-like features. It’d also be less than $1,000. The Ultrabook is a lot like the Macbook Air, so it’ll be interesting to see how well it can compete. It’s interesting to note that Intel hasn’t been so lucky with things like this in the past, though. A few years ago they tried something similar called an Ultra-Low Voltage notebook and it failed to catch on. But if Mac can do it, why can’t they? source
Posted by Justin Jones • 0 Comments • Permalink
 
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